Vanities

The Original Gossip Girl

British-born novelist Jackie Collins, 72, published her first book, The World Is Full of Married Men, in 1968. Since then, more than 400 million copies of her sexually charged tales of power and deception have sold worldwide. As her new book, Poor
Little Bitch Girl (St. Martin’s), arrives in stores, our correspondent checks in.

Photograph by Patrick Fraser.

George Wayne: Hi, darling! Have you been thinking about me?

Jackie Collins: I think about you every morning.
Yeah, right. As you slab a pound of La Mer wrinkle cream all over your haggard face.

I don’t like La Mer. The other one, the Swiss one. What’s it called? It’s in a blue pot—La Prairie.
Do you look in the mirror and think, I’ll get a fresh start working on my next book?

I don’t want to look in the mirror in the morning—do you? When I designed my house I didn’t have a mirror put above the sink, because I think there’s nothing worse than getting up to clean your teeth and staring at yourself.
I read a chapter of your new book. The character Svetlana looks at her nude image in a mirror—readying herself for a $30,000-an-hour sexual encounter with a 15-year-old. What kind of diabolical mind concocts such prurience?

I was reading about Eliot Spitzer and the way he ran off with that call girl. It came to me—why didn’t I have this girl who comes to New York and starts to run these incredible hookers? And, you know, so many people pay so much money for the hookers. You know it’s going on all over New York, with these powerful men.
Would you admit your life would never have been the same without your second husband, Oscar Lerman?

Yes, he was a wonderful guy. He’s the first person who encouraged me to write. Everyone said, “You can’t be a writer. You’ve got to go to school, you’ve got to get degrees &hellip; ” He read half of a story I had written, and he said, “You’re a fabulous storyteller.”
You’re 72 years old. Are you still sexually active?

Well, of course. Aren’t you?
Honey, I haven’t gotten laid in so long, I need to go back to Russia.

You know what? I’ve kept my private life very private. I’m going to write a memoir. I’m going to call it Reform School or Hollywood.Speaking of—you were expelled from high school for servicing the wrestling coach, right?

No, for playing truant. And waving at the resident flasher. This guy would flash us little girls in our school uniforms every Monday. I would look, and I would point at his dick, and I would say, “Oh, it must be a very cold day today!”
Any bouts of lesbiana in your past?

Well, I did go to an all-girls school. Need I say more? Honey, I’ve dabbled in everything.
I love this gal! Let’s talk about your love of leopard print.

I’m not Shirley MacLaine, but I have this belief that I was a leopard or a panther in another life.
Which of your books do you think pushed your notoriety to new heights?

I wrote Hollywood Wives, and there were lines of valets, maids, and chauffeurs outside of the bookstores—when we still had bookstores in Beverly Hills—trying to get a copy, to see if anybody was mentioned in it. It was very controversial. The Hollywood wives hated me. I got beneath the façade and into the mansions. Now it’s become part of the language.
Have you seen Twilight?

I saw Twilight, which I liked a lot. But what’s this obsession with vampires? Do people really want somebody to stick their teeth into their necks? Maybe the girls think the vampire can suck all the fat out of them, and they can all be thin, like the girls in Hollywood?
One fact we need to clear up. You and your sister, Joan Collins, both love to wear wigs.

I don’t wear wigs. I think she should get a wig line, because she wears fabulous wigs.
That cascading hair is yours?

It’s mine, baby.
Honey, you rock.

George Wayne, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, has been writing for the magazine since the early 1990s.